My Big Fat Canadian Holiday {2.0}

This past Christmas was our third holiday spent in Canada w/ my man-friend and his boys. This time, Tango got to join us and we once again had a very Canadian holiday…

Christmas:

Tango and I drove up from California and arrived just in time for Christmas Eve stories and bed time. Our Christmas w/ Fraser and the boys was fantastic (well… the fantastic started after his youngest son came up to bed with us and then promptly threw up all over the bed at 3am… after that, things got fantastic). We had a great morning opening presents, FaceTime-ing with my family and his, and having a go at our very first attempts at turkey and stuffing. <— Both turned out wonderfully thanks to the fine people over at Pinterest for offering up appx. 50,000 recipes to choose from. The two recipes we used are here on my Holiday Board. We spent the day in our pajamas, relaxing and playing with toys. We ended the night with the Polar Express. It was wonderful.

Cross Country Skiing:

I bought XC skis (<– I’ve learned xc is the way to abbreviate “cross country.” I feel legit now…) on this trip so we took Tango out to some relatively flat trails. There wasn’t a person in sight and Tango had the time of his life. This was my 2nd time on classic skis (first time detailed here) and the lack of hills proved to be the determining factor of my success. It was a gorgeous day, my man-friend and I had a blast, and watching Tango in complete and utter joy sprinting back and forth was my jam.

TobogganAdventures

So my man-friend has always done this thing with the boys where he ties a rope onto their sled and takes them onto the trails. Whenever they yell, “Toboggan Adventures” at the top of their lungs, he takes off sprinting as fast as he can for about 30 – 60 seconds. I joined him last year and this year, Tango joined as well. Fraser bought him a legit sled dog harness and so all 3 of us pulled the boys… which was a good thing because they’re getting bigger and heavier! Tango was again in heaven and the boys thought it was hilarious. Once the trail narrowed, I unhooked myself to grab some photos.

{Downhill Skiing}

***I’ve never typed ‘downhill skiing’ before. I’ve never had the need to differentiate as I only knew one type of skiing. Now that I’ve been exposed to a several, I feel I’ve got to distinguish between the 4 I now know. I’m still waiting to learn more. There must be more…

Anyway, we went skiing at the mountain the next day, but it was crazy cold. I got a few runs in and then had to defrost back at the lodge. I didn’t get any photos as my hands were shoved deep into my gloves most of the time, so this is one from a couple days before. We had a great day and I was excited to get back by the fire with Tango when we got home that night.

I sat out of the shinny-ing a couple years ago because I hadn’t been on ice skates since I was 15 years old. You can read back on my live-tweet of that game here. Since then, I’ve gotten marginally better on skates. This year I joined in for my first ever neighborhood pick-up game and had an absoluteblast. I’ve never had so much fun doing something I was so amazingly bad at. Thank goodness the girl I slammed into was just like me. As we’re speeding toward each other… Me: “I can’t stop!” Her: “Me neither!” SLAM! We were fine though and both laughed it off. Remaining upright was hard, trying to control a puck with a stick was even harder, but everybody was just out to have a fun time and so fun was had. There was even a fight to watch. ; )

Hot chocolate afterward was the perfect après-shinny.

Man-Friend

Having 9 days with my man-friend was the best. Getting to spend a ton of time with the boys, playing outside in the snow, watching movies next to each other instead of over FaceTime, working on our 2016 goals together, and New Year’s Eve around a roaring fire with friends… All of it was so good. It’s always great getting weekends here and there together, but getting to spend at least a week together is huge. It sure did make driving away harder though. At least there was a pretty sunrise…